S.H.I.E.L.D. Los Angeles

SHIELD Agents in MCU+ Mutants

Our Agents endured days of hostile but professional debriefs and then over a week of largely inane or politically-directed questioning by the Senate and House Intelligence Committees. White got arrested for Contempt of Congress. Copeland made it look like her most annoying and political questioner was a fool, and that she was politely trying very hard to keep him from embarrassing himself. He was grateful.

Meanwhile: the SHIELD and Hydra data dumps to the internet induced a frenzy. (The report of what Karyazad told Our Agents did not go public; evidently Fury kept it to himself.)
The Army Centipede program was shown to be almost fully compromised by Hydra and most of its enhanced soldiers brainwashed.
The dissolution of SHIELD with no warning angered several of the SHIELD Alliance’s other members.
The struggle for the shiny bits of SHIELD and its purviews was on. DMA Director McCoy quietly and unilaterally began taking over his agency’s former tasks.
The GOP started to try to impeach Obama. Again.

Mgwanze and Copeland got released and were invited to Stark Tower. The Event Room was full of art treasures from Sicily and a mix of guided tours and contending museum reps being semi-civilized under the invisible eyes of Stark security and the very visible ones of Peter Rasputin, Fred Dukes and others. (Let alone the presence of Stark himself, Banner, a number of Xies…)

M&C looked at the art, socialized (Rogers and Carlysle were there), ate great snacks, drank great drinks, got caught up to speed on events…- Barnes was doing very well both with his physical retraining (newly grown limbs have limited muscle memory) and psychotherapy. Psionically assisted psychotherapy is much tquicker, and more effective, than the normal, supersoldiers heal and adapt fast, and Barnes was hella tough. And Thea Grace was banging him.
- Maria Hill was working for Stark.

Our Agents, Romanov, Guthrie, Dukes, Nixon, Barton, Pryde and Rogers returned to the Helicarrier via Carlysle teleport. The Helicarrier had been forced by sabotage to settle to the sea a few miles off New Jersey. Sensors were out. Aircraft were locked out.

Rogers had Guthrie, Carlysle and Harris circle the Helicarrier as aerial lookout.

With Director Fury dead and Deputy Director Hill away, Agent Hand (Level Eight) was in charge supported by Agent Coulson (?!! Quickly explained), also an Eight. Hand turned command over to Coulson and left to personally see to traitor Hydra mole Garret’s (*) imprisonment.

A group of transport and attack helicopters from Fort Bragg headed for the Helicarrier, radio silent and stealthed by illusion from the observers until far too close. Helicarrier Aegis and missiles were rendered far less effective by Gifted force fields and technopathic disruption: Despite the Helicarrier defenses and Guthrie’s and Carlysles’ attacks, 40+ Hydra-controlled Army Centipede soldiers hit the Helicarrier deck, along with a few Gifted. One of those, the Winter Soldier, went straight for Rogers and engaged him as an equal. Copeland backed Rogers up. Mgwanze swatted Centipedes off the deck with their flying car — the only air support available — then picked up Barton for joint flying car and archery ops. Dukes kicked ass. Mindee Grace cloaked herself, Manh and others and picked Centipedes off. Pryde picked off targets of opportunity with phasing attacks. Mind-controlled soldiers are generally less effective than free ones; they did poorly. The Winter Soldier’s mask came off and Rogers ID’d him as his childhood friend and Howling Commando hero James Buchanan Barnes. The WS didn’t seem to recognize Rogers. Barnes went down without major harm. Dukes policed the deck by kicking vulnerable or wounded Centipedes into the sea, including one phased ankle deep in the deck who left his feet behind. Carlysle fished herself out of the sea and started healing the wounded. Mindee Grace examined Barnes psychically while Carlysle went Ford and scanned him physically — full of drugs, shock therapy damage, brainwashing. Rogers had Carlysle heal Barnes: the robot arm came off, the drugs came out, physical brain damage healed… and he recognized Rogers,

Major Glenn Talbot, USAF, contacted the Helicarrier and informed them he had Presidential authority to take control. Coulson agreed to comply and bailed with his team in their jet — Talbot was one of Gen. Ross’ protegees and vehemently anti-SHIELD, anti-Avengers, etc. Romanov was the only Level 8 Agent left aboard; she reluctantly took charge. Technopath SHIELD tech Jones informed them that, as of an hour before, SHIELD was dissolved. Romanov released everyone who wanted to go; Nixon, Jones and others declined to trust the DoD and did so. Rogers and Barnes went with them to the Xavier Institute via Carlysle.

Romanov met Talbot’s helicopters with the more imposing Gifted up front and Mindee Grace, crystalformed, in the center holding a Cure detector. Talbot’s men had lots of Cure darts on them. Romanov welcomed Talbot aboard. Grace requested -demanded - they surrender their nonregulation Cure supplies (all of them, she’d checked with McCoy) to her as the ranking DMA agent present. Talbot looked at her, Dukes, and Guthrie (all dart proof) and complied. Things went smoothly and according to the book thereafter; knowing that Grace’s sisters were watching out her eyes, with DMA Director at their side may have had something to do with it.

Everyone was more or less politely held for questioning and taken to Washington DC.

Carlysle kept making excuses to not go Ford and heal herself.
Then she found out she couldn’t. And couldn’t figure out why.

Phoebe Grace, Logan (ace pilot and bodyguard) and DMA Deputy Virginia Brown (aka Pixie, living parachute and aircraft exit, just in case) flew X-jet 2 (of 2) up to northern Manitoba, did an aerial dock with Jeffries’ Batmobile and headed to Stark Tower.

When Phoebe Grace arrived at Stark Tower, Potts pointed her at Carlysle. Ms Potts suspected, correctly, that the person who kept Guthrie, Carlysle and Harris from noticing 30 oncoming helicopters had messed with Vanessa’s head. Phoebe cleared that shit right up. (Carlysle/ Marut’s own electrical burst attack had trashed her psi shield gadget, making her easier prey.)
Potts agreed to shelter the art treasures and invited herself along to watch Jeffries work and meet Ms Szardos, when they got to that point in their to do list.

VC went Ford and healed in under a minute (Regeneration 10). She teleported to Indianopolis and transported Ford to the X Institute, popped over to the Helicarrier and started healing people. The others jetted to the Helicarrier.
The Graces couldn’t detect enemy psychic anywhere near — psionic invisibility that extends to psi is like that — so they laid psi invisibility on Logan who sniffed him (Gary Lumley aka Mind Flayer) out — Lumley wasn’t hiding so much as lurking — and Cured him.
M Jeffries fixed the physical damage to the ship and aircraft.
The ship’s surviving cybermancer (infected with a debilitating virus as part of the sabotage, fixed up by VC), Romanov and, presumably, Mgwanze fixed the computer problems.

Centipede soldiers swimming ashore were intercepted by Agents Nixon and Manh, M Grace and Dukes in the aircar. (With Guthrie and Harris as air cover.) The women immobilized them and Dukes hopped down to shoot aerosol Cure into their mouths or up their noses. A couple of them managed to heat up (Cure can’t take too much heat) and had to be beaten unconscious first, then sprayed. DMA agents took them into custody.

Mindee and Phoebe examined James Buchanan Barnes. He’d been subjected to physical, psychological, chemical and electrical conditioning and memory alteration. Carlysle blew the chemicals away and fixed any gross damage from the electroshock and such when she healed Barnes. M & P explained that psi-assisted psychological therapy (PAST) was still therapy — they had quite a bit of experience with therapy for several kinds of brainwashing and psionic abuse (one of their main jobs at the XI) — it takes time. Also, PAST works far better on willing subjects.
What happened is, when Barnes woke up healed, drug-free, two-armed, unlike the one-arm-and-prosthesis Winter Soldier, with his oldest friend sitting in front of him, he went into a fugue state, reverting to a fuzzy version of JBB of 1945 with no memory of anything since.

Up in orbit, while Tatiana Belenskaya/Bright Star kept the Hydra agents on the nascent SHIELD Alliance Satellite busy, Agent Petrovna/Dark Star flew Agents Pryde and Manh, and an unidentified man, up to it undetected. (B Star had melted their radar array.) Pryde phased them in, the man — Quicksilver in a mask — quickly immobilized everyone in a compartment with a large supply of plastic restraints. Manh sorted them out. Most of the compartments had been sealed, so Pryde phase them in to the next, repeat, rinse, repeat. The only real mess involved a dead man switch: Q took the switch-holder’s hand off. Then Petrovna flew them over to sort out the ISS and OBL (Orbital Big Lifter) crews. Petrovna, Pryde and Manh sacked out — long, long days for them.. Piotr met everybody, took a lot of pics and talked them into letting him go on a spacewalk. Upon waking, Petrovna acquired a teleport sight on the SAS and popped prisoners down when the station was within her range to one of her memorized sites. Then she popped the agents and Piotr to Earth and replacement crew up. During that day Carlysle acquired the SAS site as well.

In Sicily, Virginia Potts and Phoebe Grace negotiated with Margali Szardos while Jeffries worked. Actually, Phoebe kept alert for any mindfuckery while watching and listening — along with Szardos’ daughter Amanda and Amandas’s friend Jennifer, both witches some sort — to two world class bargainers enjoying a genteel mercantile knife fight. Carlysle napped. Potts and Szardos had a wonderful time and ended up apparent friends.

Jeffries finished, and revealed that there was a lot more gold tucked away — formed into big artworks and architectural trimmings — than they’d thought. A little over 8 tons of gold with debatable artistic value and artworks worth, maybe, after much debate by Potts, Szardos, Szardos and J Kale, art lovers all, perhaps half as much as the Venus de Milo: 800 million. The gold was worth about 700 million. Roughly 1.5 billion total. Minus Szardos’ property — about 3 million in art and half a mil in gold — and the 1% (of the gold) ‘security fee’ she’d negotiated, and the 5% (of the gold, half a standard finder’s fee) “secure transport fee” Carlysle negotiated when awakened and informed of the facts. Jeffries made a hole to the surface and ran up an antenna so that Potts could phone home and warn Stark. Jeffries morphed the bullion-turned-decorations back into bricks. Carlysle teleported it all (accompanied: she insisted so there would be witnesses that it all went where it was supposed to ) to Stark Tower in several loads, then took Szardos’ load to an undisclosed location.

Kingslayers

Velasquez had two (or more) world class teleporters — Azazel and Illyana Rasputin — as slaves. He was know to use them a lot; he liked the high life. Known wc teleporters were: El Rey’s thralls, Lila Cheney, they Vanisher (not seen in decades), and mimics channelling the powers of any of those others, primarily Vanessa Carlysle. The newest iteration of the teleport detectors not capable of worldwide or continental reach but Sicily…

V. had an unknown number of powerful Gifted slaves. Any confrontation outside of his home would result in a lot of collateral damage. SHIELD was unable to locate V. outside his home. [ V. would pick a rich man, slave him and his entourage, shapeshift himself and his own entourage, and replace them. No money trail, no witnesses — slaves remained slaved, nothing to trace.] They knew from Karyazad that Asgard (and Hemidall who could see anything he wanted to see) owed Drs. Selvig and Foster Very Big Favors. They very reluctantly asked Selvig, who had ben slaved himself, to cash a favor in. Selvig’s reaction was, “Hell yes.” Selvig contacted Karyazad and arranged for Heimdall to tell him where V. was when asked, and a method to do so. SHIELD would surround V’s home with Teleportation Interdictors/TIs. If V. was home, good. If not, scare him home by surrounding him with TIs, slow enough to get away. Then turn the TIs on and assault. They hit up the DMA, and XI for muscle; both were happy to oblige.

SHIELD, via the DMA, assigned or recruited Agent Harris, Ultra [M/ Monique] XI alumnus from Monaco, Angel Dark and a few others capable of quiet flight with no energy trails, nightvision and tight lips to place Teleportation Detectors/TDs around Sicily’s coasts, then move them inward towards the cluster of hits. V’s home was hidden underground in a north-central national park. SHIELD moved TIs in, very stealthily.

Our Agents suddenly worried that V. might have infiltrated SHIELD with slaves. They went to Mindee Grace; she and Manh cleared Fury, then Hill. Then, with permission, worked their way through the Helicarrier — the Graces had learned how to detect a V-slave at a glance, and “are you a Hydra agent” while mind controlled worked for everyone else… They found a lot of Hydra agents and some slaves; some were both.

Fury called Selvig, Selvig contacted Heimdall: V was in a penthouse suite of a high end hotel in Mumbai, India. Vanessa Carlysle teleported Agents Rogers, White, Mgwanze, Romanov and Copeland to Mumbai. They rented a helo. White infiltrated to place two of the six necessary TIs on the walls of the adjoining suite. (He collected the 12 yr old girl in the suite’s occupant’s bed and did a little social justice along the way.) The others place the four other TI units. They turned them on, one per two seconds. Inside V’s suite the rap video-esque orgy was interrupted when Illyana Rasputin felt the TI’s go on: she rushed to V and teleported him and the two bodyguards who made it in time away. One left behind bodyguard grew two feet and got sniped by Romanov with a Mk V blaster (the long gun version). Two more, an Extremis/Centipede soldier and a female airbender blasted out a window to attack the helo. Rogers interrupted the Centipede’s leap with his shield; the man fell 44 stories. Mgwanze out flew the airbender and Copeland shot her with a grapple [as seen in CA2] and subdued her. Romanov shot the Centipede a couple of times until Rogers hopped down (Mgwanze having descended 8 stories up) and beheaded him. They called Carlysle, landed on the street and got the hell out of Mumbai.

They’d gone in. Unfortunately, Stark batteries would not work within the compound. No Mk IVs, SHIELD pistols, etc. The Strike Agents went in intending to take weapons off the enemy.
Those outside had scattered reports of attacks on SHIELD, DMA and the Xavier Institute.
Monroe sent Carlysle to the Xavier Institute to get firearms. As soon as she was back with pallet agents operating the radar array reported two missiles inbound. Three. Guthrie and Carlysle (in Marut form) rocketed off while Monroe attempted lightning strikes, Aguia shot firebolts and Cassidy readied a last-ditch sonic barrier. Four, five. Missiles down. Carlysle grabbed Magma and flew her to a missile launch site: burned out. Six missiles in all, all neutralized.

Harris flying monkey’d the arms in to the compound following Our Agents, Romanov and Rogers. They found dead shapeshifted slaves, some dead agents. Dead Extremis soldiers — no Centipede units on them, looking like they should explode any minute, Drake torn in half, Smith shot to shit. Art treasures in varying degrees of intact to trashed. Agent Nixon, sweating, with six Extremis soldiers thrashing around blindly in their own puke, piss and shit: Rogers and Romanov Cured them manually. Thea Grace, one foot burned off at the ankle, guarded by three Agents. Peter Rasputin staggering along with glowing hand prints melted into his shoulder and ribs.

Rooms, rooms, halls, rooms. A very large room: A. Manh and Mindee Grace staring at a 10’ tall, paralyzed Extremis soldier. Dukes, his nigh-invulnerable hands smoking as he wrestled another giant with white-hot hands. Barton, Pryde and Logan death-dancing with five more Extremis soldiers. Rogers and Romanov joined the dance. Our Agents killed the paralyzed giant, Rogers severed the other’s spine. Azazel teleported in to sword Manh and White shot him, A. teleported out. Illyana popped in to chop someone with a spatial displacement blade effect but froze for a second when her brother shouted at her… and Copeland Cured her. Extremis soldiers died or were Cured. Pryde staggered out of the wall to the room beyond, her assault suit on fire; she phased out of the suit in her underwear and gasped out, “He can do fire too!”

Room clear, they prepared to move in to the next room. Mgwanze persuaded the vault-like door to open and Dukes and Rasputin rushed in, Rogers and Logan followed but fire chased them back. Roaring fire, yells, booming thumps and a choked off scream. More thumps. Dukes and Rasputin reduced Velasquez to paste.

They freed a drugged woman in a cage whom Mgwanze’s voices identified as the mistress of the compound’s enchantments. They worked out how to toss Extremis corpses and parts out and into the Tyrrhenian Sea — Dukes and Storm, with Guthrie as a spotter — to explode more or less safely. The enchantress revived: Margali Szardos, slaved more than a decade. She helped them find and kill Azazel and agreed to seal the compound off and guard the art treasures (what was left of them) from the Mafia and so on. Mindee Grace vetted her, with reservations. They planned to get Madison Jeffries to repair what he could of the damaged art treasures. Later.

The X Institute reported fighting off an assault by Centipede soldiers and Hydra agents.
Carlysle teleported the DMA/XI group and their dead to the Institute; a second wave was very surprised.

Carlysle teleported the SHIELD group to the Helicarrier, which had suffered sabotage and been forced to land off the coast of New Jersey. The Skunk Works dome had been broken, casualties unknown. Other SHIELD sites were under attack from within. Hydra had thoroughly infiltrated SHIELD over decades, Velasquez had slaved many key Hydra agents and had ordered an all-out attack in hopes of drawing off the forces attacking his home. Now all the slaves were free of his influence, some of them reverting to their natural shapes.

Director Fury was dead, assassinated by a sizable force impersonating DC police and a Gifted with a metal arm.

Karyazad made arrangements through SHIELD to meet with Drs Foster and Selvig. Privately. According to them, Karyazad gave them thanks on behalf of herself and her family for helping Thor save the Nine Realms and kill Malekith. Any favor she can do for them without breaking her oaths to Asgard and her family, she promised to do. She answered all the questions they had for her: three hours for Foster, eleven for Selvig. K allowed them to record with their personal devices but turned off or broke all of SHIELD’s bugs. Both turned copies over to SHIELD (Fury personally apologized to Foster, at length) though Selvig had turned his off for a number of hours. She gave them both amulets: devices for contacting her and for protection against mental attacks.

K also had Heimdall (with the King’s permission) return the two British pilots and their aircraft that ended up in Vanaheim. They’d been injured, one very badly, and their planes wrecked. Both are now fully recovered and their aircraft fixed — with ‘improvements’.
K: “Earth is very well thought of in the Nine Realms now. People took the opportunity to give thanks.”
The pilots are now mildly Gifted (supersoldier lite) and the jets are now VTOL space planes capable of flying to the Moon and back. The RAF and SHIELD UK are having a tug of war over the jets and McCoy, Stark, Viera and Topolov (sort of Russian dwarf Stark) all want to look them over.

Agents Copeland and Mgwanze joined the augmented Lila Cheney party (her original group — most of her band, various friends and personal assistants, hulking bodyguard Guido Carosella — plus Mindee Grace and Vanda and Piotr X) in Miami Beach after headquarters declined to do more than a half-hour phone debrief. Around 4am Lila checked them all into a luxury hotel penthouse to continue and then crash. When Our Agents woke up Lila, Guido and the X’s were gone and a large contingent of well-tipped hotel staff were helping the partiers clean up. M & C cleaned up. Hangovers were minor, one of the perks of being Gifted. HQ called and requested that Ms. Grace check them out for psychic tampering. Mindee contacted a sister to make sure she was good to scan, and did that thing. No surprises.

G & M decided to go investigate the Botanica Santurce where the summoner had bought most of his occult supplies. Mindee tagged along. Agent Copeland had them dress as a moneyed dilettante, her vacuous friend, both a bit Goth, and Mgwanze as the edgy boyfriend. The business was large and prosperous, crowded with odd things. Mindee browsed. Copeland’s excellent Deception skills kept Armando, the propriator, from noticing that Mgwanze came across as a little coplike. Copeland talked their way into seeing the ‘secret’ stash, an alleged Hand of Glory, a couple of actual skulls (‘child sacrificed by Satanists’, ‘seventh son of a seventh son’) and other crap marked up at least 1,000%. Copeland seemed like the perfect mark, so Armando maintained his spiel until Mindee came over, read his mind and called him out. His stash was legal — technically, barely, maybe. He felt that, should one of his customers use a ‘hand of glory’ as a burglary tool, he’d get what he deserved. Armando revealed, very reluctantly and nervously, that he had the name and number of a dealer in the real thing: Brianna Morgan. A couple of the people he’d referred to her had disappeared; probably: he didn’t check too hard. Our Agents gave Armando a number to call if he had more such customers. Armando requested they call him if, um, Morgan was no longer anyone to worry about.

Cpt. Rogers phoned Copeland as they left. He was getting some pilot time in on flying cars — their LA office flying car, to be precise, Portaled to the Helicarrier — and could hand it over to them. Yes, please. They switched out of the rental, called the company to pick it up, and switched to the argrav-conversion Lexus 450h. Rogers presented and briefed them on the new, standard weapons: ICIs (Incapacitating Cartridge Imitators, more commonly called NNGs, night-night guns). Rogers decided to go along, especially because Mindee Grace supposed to be running around without a bodyguard.

Brianna Morgon lived in Tampa, so Rogers piloted them out to sea and around the Florida coast while practicing things like skimming the waves. Copeland set out to distract him. Mindee insisted she stop while she was a passenger both verbally and by psionically. Rogers growled at Grace. Rogers went to a safer altitude, Copeland continued to test his concentration.

By the time they were approaching Tampa they had intel on Morgan. Moderately rich, minor socialite, some politically wise charities, taxes completely in order. Serious political connections to the mayor of Tampa and the governor of Florida. While brainstorming on how to get at her secrets, Copeland called Agatha Harkness to learn what she knew about Morgan. Agatha said she’d planned to call Copeland. However, concerning Morgan: bad news, a practitioner, mansion undoubtedly had arcane defenses, hadn’t quite risen to the top of Harkness’ to do list. Harkness said that someone wanted to meet them; were they in a place where that someone could join them?

Rogers landed in a relatively secluded place half a mile from Morgan’s home. A woman joined them via Agatha’s mirror: almost inhumanly gorgeous, Eurasian features with slightly pointed ears, brown hair, blue eyes, well dressed. Copeland introduced the group. The woman introduced herself as Karyazad, Companion to the Queen of Asgard.

Rogers: Who is dead.

K: Alas, yes. I continue to obey her commands. With her death and other changes there are some things you — SHIELD, your nation — should know.

Earth and all the Nine Realms are Asgardian protectorates. I am aware of just how much you will like the taste of that. The Nine Realms are closely connected by the Bridges by which interstellar space is traveled. Some are allies. Some are hostile. Earth has been subject to something like benign neglect. As access to any of the Nine brings easy access to Asgard, the King controls contact with Outsiders.

A little over a thousand years ago Earth was invaded from Jotunheim, one of the Nine. This was possible because a mortal mystic helped make a Bridge. The King led an Asgardian army to Earth and drove them out, with considerable losses. He was inclined to prevent further problems of that sort by eliminating Earth’s practitioners. The Queen convinced him that she would handle it. She had a number of Earth’s mystics, mostly women, trained in the Arts and set them to policing the occult. There is also a group, a loose cabal of sorcerers whose powers are largely dependent on Outsiders, centered in Tibet. There are Bridges to other worlds within the normal universe, and there are ones to worlds, places…

M: With different natural laws.

K: Yes. Kaungardar. ‘Pocket dimensions’, perhaps, though some are large as planets. Most or all of them seem to be artificial. Some of their inhabitants might seem demonic or angelic to humans. They frequently have parasitical designs on the worlds and lives of the idiots who deal with them. Forceful arguments are sometimes necessary. Specifically, the Bifrost, the teleportation device used in New Mexico and in London, can reach anyone in the Nine Realms no matter how many miles of rock block him from the sky. It need not take the target to Asgard, it can drop them instead in interstellar space. It can quickly move armies. Given time the Bifrost could destroy — remove — a mountain range.

70-80 years ago the power of many Earthly practitioners suddenly increased, about the same time your Gifted started showing much greater powers. Some of the Tibetan cabal tested their new power against Asgard; they were removed.

M: How do they avoid detection in Tibet?

K: Under Tibet, actually. And it’s the center only because the most powerful of them lives there.

One of the reasons Agatha did not care to meet with your Mr. Fury, Ms Hill or your President is that once she’s met someone and paid attention, she can contact them at any time telepathically. And know their exact whereabouts. That’s how telepathic communication works, same as for Ms. Grace here…

MGrace: I can talk to anyone I’ve paid attention to but I don’t know where they are.

K: [looks mildly surprised] You should work on that. Further, Agatha can then use her Mirror to teleport people to her. She’d rather not alarm SHIELD unnecessarily.

So, yes, Earth is a neglected protectorate. This may change. You now have some Gifted powerful enough to be important military assets to the crown. Thor is enamored of Dr. Foster and has vowed to protect Earth as well as the other Nine. And, most importantly, Drs Foster and Selvig were instrumental in killing Malekith, who murdered Queen Frigga, and preventing the destruction of the Nine Worlds — and possibly much more. They intended to unmake the entire Universe. My Queen was beloved in Asgard, Vanaheim and Alfheim. This is enormous social and political capital; use it wisely.

C: [Indicating K’s ears] Are you an elf?

K: .My father is a light-elf, my mother a Van. My people split with the dark-elves, Malekith’s folk, over embracing this universe instead of rejecting it. One of my grandfathers, who did not embrace the light, may have been among those killed in England. 5,000 years ago Malekith’s folk tried to use the last Convergence to try to unmake the universe. They attacked my people first, as traitors, then struck at Asgard to prevent interference. All but one ship and crew, the one that visited England, were killed.

Now I want to see you, SHIELD agents, in action. What you do, how you do it, and why.

Karyazad offers to help with subterfuge, demonstrating Loki-like illusion tricks. Our Agents and Rogers decide they don’t have enough evidence to do anything about Brianna Morgan just yet but have her watched. SHIELD will send an Obregon (occult consultant) or two with trainee agency occultists and backup.

They end up clubbing again. Karyazad drinks a lot, tried new concoctions (hasn’t been to Miami for 22 years), new versions of old dances, new and old music and observes Our Agents, Cpt Rogers and Mindee in a social situation. Karyazad does not spot the minders SHIELD has watching them in every club until, the third time she taunts a girlfriend-abusing thug to attack her and his friends join in and she breaks (non-fatally… probably) five of them. The minder shows Miami PD officers that she has diplomatic immunity. Like Thor. At 4am Karyazad tells them she has an appointment in Russia, then another with the misogynist in Tibet. She has an area of the parking lot cleared, calls for the Bifrost and is gone.

As the group heads for a hotel, Mgwanze wonders aloud what happened “70-80 years ago”.
Rogers says, “The Nazis dug up the Tesseract. Asgardians hid it in Norway.”
M: “Shit!”
R: “And the ‘Aether’, the — thing — that bonded to Foster was, probably, under London for the last 5,000 years.”
M: “They’re using Earth as a toxic waste dump! What else is here?”
Rogers stops and pulls out a SHIELD satphone, hits speed dial, puts it on speaker.
Laina Petrovna: “Da? Rogers, what to you want, I’m busy…”
R: Is Karyazad there? I have a question.
LP: pause: Here she is.
K: Yes, Captain?
R: The Tesseract, the Aether: What else has Asgard hidden here?
K: Don’t you think that’s enough? There are more… things like that, older than this universe, but it’s amazing that two could be hidden here, or that Asgard would have them at all. Three would be ridiculous!
R: So, not so far as you know.
K: Correct. Shit. The Dark Star is getting irritated. Sleep well; I won’t.
Everybody looks at Rogers. R: What? After Antarctica, of course I have Petrovna on speed-dial. And Cheney, Carlysle, McCoy, Banner…

MEANWHILE
Eric Lensherr’s new project after forcing a nearly two week cease fire in Syria, and then killing pres. al-Assad (and most of the people in the presidential palace) for breaking it:

EL’s sphere flew around Pakistan a few miles up, then left*.

Next he went to North Korea and removed all the plutonium and uranium he could find, along with accompanying missiles, towed the mass into orbit, built up speed and tossed it to the Moon.

Lensherr issued an on-camera statement to TVNZ: TVNZ: Mr. Lensherr, why did you destroy North Korea’s nuclear weapons?
EL: Because I could. I should have done it years ago. Nuclear weapons can be used to protect humanity, as proved in New York City two years ago. Weapons controlled by an unstable fool are another thing entirely.TVNZ: The Korean government says they have more.
EL, smug: They’re lying.

*Pakistan’s nukes were stolen by Dark Star and Bright Star — Belenskaya — years ago. DS dragged them into orbit and BS accelerated them to intercept the Moon.

Agents Copeland and Mgwanze are vacationing separately in Florida. Cpt Rogers is with Copeland, dancing, dining, jet-skiing, speed-boating, screwing their brains out, etc. Mgwanze is mostly checking out the many cuisines available and kicking back. Carlysle joins him for a couple of days, resting from channelling Ford on a healer-tour of South Africa.

They get called up to check out a very strange mass murder in Miami. A dozen traffickers died in a shootout by 1) blade, 2) friendly fire and 3) dropping dead. A couple of traffickees took stray rounds. And six things that looked exactly like WOW trolls were in the fight on the traffickers’ side. The troll corpses melted away to nothing but not before pics were taken, some by the first cops on the scene. One traffickee saw things: there was a blur and blood and flying limbs and gunfire and one guy threw down a bunch of colorful eggs and the monsters popped up and got hacked or blasted apart. Several of the traffickers’ guns had been disassembled and scattered.
Our Agents took the eggs to a lab, started to work - and Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch (Piotr and Vanda X, not in costume - and Q got over his Billy Idol phase decades ago) quietly walk in. They admit to attacking the traffickers and seem to think that Mgwanze and Copeland will not have a problem with that. Vanda tells them that he mentor, Agatha, insists they find and deal with the Summoner responsible for the trolls. She comments on the idiocy of giving constructs forms that have resonance with lots of people. Given egg pieces, Vanda should be able to locate the scumbag. She can. They go (in, sadly, a normal SHIELDSUV) across the bay on the Venetian Causeway towards Miami Beach. As they get near Di Lido Island there’s a blast of fire from the other side of DLI. As the get on DLI a 30’ true-to-the LotR movie Balrog flies heavily up to the Causeway and starts booting cars, then lights others up with a big blast of fire breath.
Quicksilver is gone, blurring around the monster. Copeland and Mgwanze get out the Mk IVs and start shooting. Q pops up and informs them that the monster regenerates, fast. Vanda says she’ll take care of that, grimaces at it, gestures, says, “Got it. But that will take all my attention.”, nods and hops the Causeway railing.
Q distracts it. M & C blast it. Q gets swatted into some trees. They blast it some more. Q comes back. More blasting — it has red hot gaps in its black armor skin now. It starts to take flight and Q tornados a car into a wing, then stops to rest. More blasting while it’s and easy target and it comes apart, leaving scorch marks and smoke.
Copeland speeds towards the burning house the monster apparently came from. Vanda levitates up and flies, slowly, the group to the house. The waterfront house/mansion isn’t nearly as on fire as it should be. Rich-ass neighbors are trying to keep it from spreading to their homes. A MFD fire boat is on it’s way. Copeland enters and finds one person, male, unconscious in an elaborate pentacle on the second floor room missing one side and part of the roof. The others arrive, Mgwanze produces SHIELD ID. Q is still exhausted. Vanda does fire suppression. Copeland and Mgwanze remove the unconscious guy (crowd ID’d as the neighbor) computer data and safe contents: lots of money, plus occult-looking stuff — hand of glory, vials of something, amulets, a child’s skull… Vanda says nothing is mystically significant but the demon-head amulet the perp has in his hand. Vanda insists that she take the amulet to her mentor. M & C want it in SHIELD custody or destroyed. C: Who is this mentor, this Agatha? V: She’s in charge of this sort of thing in North America. Now C knows SHIELD Really wants to know. Yadda yadda. Then Vanda says, “All right,” Q/Piotr slips the amulet into C’s pocket, C, from M’s perspective, goes black and two-dimensional and disappears. Vanda says, “She wanted to talk to Agatha, now she can. She’ll be back.”
Copeland finds herself touching a big, black, oval mirror in a big, Victorian mansion facing an elderly woman: Agatha. Harkness.
They have a talk. No, Agatha does not want to talk to Fury. Yes, she is in charge of policing the Art in North America. Why her? Because she can. She’s particularly down on Summoning, either constructs or things from beyond the world. Even the constructs, like the balrog, are easily influenced by Outsiders or by the… ‘collective unconscious’, and are almost always used for bad ends. AH serves tea telekinetically, with no apparent effort or attention. Copeland gets a phone number, an assurance that AH will destroy the amulet safely (and that the summoner is not much of a threat without it) and is sent back through the mirror. (Minus surprise, Copeland could attempt to resist being teleported.)
Meanwhile, cops have helicoptered in and met the wall of SHIELD. The fire is out via MFD boat. News helos are hovering around. Copeland teleports back . Vanda levitates all and sundry to a vacant high rise on Miami Beach — Q knocks out annoying newscopter spotlights along the way.
They talk. V & P say they raid human traffickers as a regular thing, with intel supplied by WITCH (the 8th or 10th group calling itself the Womens International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell, sponsors of Vanessa Carlysle’s India trip)… M & C are pretty sure that WITCH = Agent Romanov and others at SHIELD and at the Xavier Institute. There’s organized help for the victims; Vanda gives them a card. Copeland calls Mindee Grace about interrogating the perp. She’s in, and calls in a favor from Lila Cheney. Lila, half smashed, teleports (with her fellow partiers) to the XI, teleport them and MG to Miami Beach, then the two of them to the top of the high rise, and leaves. MG makes him speak truth: he’d murdered three people via constructs, he was helping the traffickers as an in to the Devil King, who has the secret of immortality. After the trolls were wiped out within seconds of manifesting (he could feel it) he tried to summon something much more powerful to protect him. Most of is occult stuff (fakes) he bought at a Miami botanica, the very real amulet he bought at an estate auction and the phallic amulet is an authentic BC Greek good luck piece. If they want to kill they guy, Vanda says she can turn the body to dust and steam. M & C remand him to SHIELD instead. Reluctantly. Mindee, Vanda and Piotr go to find Lila. C & M join them after a very quick debrief via phone, saying they should keep the telepath, the teleporter and the ex-terrorists sweet.

Our Agents assigned to stop a speedster who’d killed more than forty members of a very large LA street gang in 5 days. Method is high speed machete or rebar .
Speedsters are not that common. Registered Super Temps supers not fast enough. Quicksilver aka many fake names is more than fast enough but not known for going after street gangs. (Though he and his sister massacred a human trafficking organization in S/E Europe a few years back.)
Then there’s Jennifer Hardwick, from Level Six. They check her out. She’s a USC student working towards becoming a stunt woman. She has three roommates at her apartment, also students, two noob actresses and one noob stuntwoman. JH has quit school and moved to Montana.
JH’s parents confirm she left for Montana. Pictures of a young boy lead to the fact that JH’s brother was killed in a drive-by. The 17-year old killer was convicted, imprisoned and got out 5 months ago.
Satellite pics show what could have been one or more speedsters messing about in the desert south of Edwards AFB.
Traffic cam reviews track JH north until she meets a man and a woman in a truck stop. Her car kept going but an out-of-work actress dressed identically to JH drove the car to Montana and abandoned it. All arranged over the internet, paid in cash at the truck stop.
There’s another killing, three cars full of bangers got hand grenades placed in moving cars, survivors chopped.LAPD gang squad knows there’s a big, secret meeting of the gang’s sub-bosses scheduled. JH seems to have extremely accurate intel on the gang’s movements. Our Agents fly around the meet site…. and spot someone leaping from roof to roof (doing no damage) at 65 mph towards the meet site. They follow - and JH hears the air car (which sounds very much like the Chitauri air sleds or Star Wars podracers). JH flees onto the freeway going north. She’s a little faster than the car — no she’s twice as fast, turns on a dime and doubles back. They go straight to the warehouse meet site, blasting through a wall with MkIVs, and find her blurring around the group severing arms, legs and heads. A bunch of bangers start shooting at the car. One dude, unfazed is tracking JH with an AK. Our Agents open up on the latter and blow a hole in the crowd. The car’s ballistic armor proves worthy of the challenge.
JH leaves off the slaughter and vacates. The agents pursue her to the top a 30-story building, where she surrenders. She’s had her revenge and will take the consequences if they protect her identity — and her parents. Not too concerned about the dead gang members, Our Agents think that’s fair and remand her to SHIELD.

Pre-game: Super Typhoon Haiyan smashed through the Philippines; Tacloban City was worst hit. Three hours after the news got out Eric Lehnsherr [yeah, I know I’ve been spelling it “Lensherr”, my bad] aka Magneto showed up at Tacloban and started to help. He moved the ships that had been washed ashore out to sea, fixing hulls with holes in them, and anchored them. He fixed the broken metal parts of wrecked sewer, power and cell tower machinery. He cleared swaths of leveled city of metal debris.

Hours after Lehnsherr started a Super-Temps/ DMA disaster aid group arrived. Those with super-senses (Sinclair, K9, The Nose, Mindee Grace) found people and bodies trapped in the rubble; phasers (Agent Pryde, Virginia Brown aka Pixie) pulled them out. Super- strong types (Agent Dukes, T-Rex and others) cleared wreckage. Madison Jeffries fixed things on a large scale. Robert Drake, aka Iceman and CEO of Super-Temps, supplied clean water by forming large (hundreds of tons) masses of ice in many locations. Lila Cheney and Vanessa Carlysle teleported supplies and personnel from all over the world. [If both ends are well-organized, each of them can average 10 tons per minute.] Carlysle and Rogue healed people.

Aside from Jeffries, who worked with him when necessary, they avoided contact with Lehnsherr. Filipino journalist Bernadette Sembrano managed to get a short interview out of Lehnsherr: he’d rather not be called ‘Magneto’; he accepted the current scientific understanding that there was no homo superior, only homo sapiens with activated X-genes; he’d been insane for some time before Alcatraz and regretted many things; he was an Auschwitz survivor; he was there to help, because he could.
President Aquino ordered everyone, particularly SHIELD and DMA personnel, to leave Lehnsherr in peace so long as he himself was peaceful.

Game:
Agents Copeland and Mgwanze woke up to orders: Pack up one of the flying cars — no heavy weapons, 3 ton limit including the car — for a trip to Tacloban City. The DMA+ aid mission was having trouble with local authorities and the mission (and PR bonanza) was being adversely affected. Mgwanze could speak to anyone and was skilled in dealing with bureaucracies. Copeland was extremely persuasive and deceptive — diplomatic. Go and fix it. The DMA and Super-Temps people would cooperate.
Carlysle teleported them to Donald Z. Romualdez Airport where Agent Potter of SHIELD and the S-T liaison briefed them. The big problem was that supplies, lot of supplies, were going missing from the NGO drop point and, to a far lesser degree, the DZMA drop point. People were desperate, organized gangs were common, many of the police and military and officials were corrupt. The DMA, S-T and, officially, SHIELD were not there to police or maintain order, just for humanitarian work. Officially. Headquarters expected them to finesse it.

In short: Our Agents delayed meeting with the local officials and bigwigs — jetlag. Did their research, gathered info and identified three, particularly two corrupt bastards as the heart of the problem. The local army colonel in charge of guarding the aid stations seemed to be honest and capable.

(Meanwhile, two supers from India: Pari Rao aka Apsara and Vihaan Singh aka Marut, arrived in Tacloban — having flown there at Mach 5 — looking to help, and to contact V. Carlysle, and were dumped on Our Agents. Rao was 23, one of the acid attack victims healed by VC who had Activated almost at once, she was stunningly beautiful, fairly tough and the fastest flier in India (top ten in the world). Singh was 18, newly Activated, with electrical powers, almost as fast as Rao, superstrength, and exuberant good will. Both had blue skin, but Rao could alter hers at her whim. They were given a sat phone, VC’s number, and told to check isolated communities for problems.)

Copeland and Mgwanze conferred privately with Colonel Regalado. His hands were tied unless he had some extremely, red-handed, damning evidence. Video would be best. Perhaps they could persuade the scary blonde girl (Mindee Grace) to help? C & M were reluctant but Regalado, while being polite and even charming, obviously thought that anyone who had a telepath on call and didn’t use her was crazy.

Mgwanze called Amara Aguia (ake Magma, Mindee’s bodyguard; Mindee did not take calls while working) via satphone. Mindee was increasingly outraged at people interfering with the mission and was happy to help.

Our Agents met with the officials and bigwigs. MG monitored telepathically. At Copeland’s direction MG planted strong suggestions that the worst offenders, a Mr. Alfafara and a Mr. Palma (Slimy and Slimier) check personally on their thieving ops at the NGO drop point that night, at the same time. Then they briefed Col Regalado. They called Bernadette Sembrano, the journalist and asked her if she wanted in on a huge muckraking story. She did. They arranged for Marut and Apsara to fly them in from the neighboring island — Marut picked up their car and flew them over at a pokey 120 mph. They reconnoitered the site and picked hiding places. Apsara would hover far overhead, Marut would stay in reserve.

The sting went off as planned. The thieves didn’t shoot it out, expecting their bosses would fix things — they didn’t see the cameras until it was too late. Palma almost got away in his armored limo but Copeland had Apsara grab her and intercept, smashing through the sun roof. Apsara left, Copeland mopped up the gunmen in the limo and let Palma get out to get chased around by Sembrano and soldiers.

Things went more smoothly after that. Col. Regaldo got a commendation and Presidential support. Sembrano’s popularity soared. Apsara/ Rao got some credit for helping out: she’d just happened to be there. (Rao, drop dead gorgeous and with a bit of Bollywood experience, was a popular minor heroine, though a foreigner.)

Apsara and Marut discovered a village that had a surplus, and tons of out of season, undamaged crops. Courtesy of 14 year old Gene-active Waray-Waray sisters Paspsai and Pagdali who could, respectively create masses of food and cause plants, trees even, to grow from seeds in seconds. Our Agents talked to the suspicious villagers. Super-Temps provided representation. Pres. Aquino was informed. They’re doing a tour of the islands.

(Meanwhile, behind the scenes: T-Rex aka Willie Forrest had been body-guarding Lady Gaga, who’d received some very nasty death threats. He had friends on Leyte Island, not too far from Tacloban, and got released to go help out; other Daniels Detective Agency agents would sub. Forrest and LG got a free teleport from fellow musician Lila Cheney to Tacloban LG looked things over and had an Idea. She organized the Concert for the Philippines Typhoon Relief within a day, using Cheney and V Carlysle for instant transport (a draw in itself). Katy Perry, Adele, Elton John, Britney Spears, Bon Jovi and U2, plus popular Philippino musicians Krizza Neri, David Archuleta and Julie Anne San Jose all agreed to play. Advertising was almost entirely by social media. Tickets for the LA concert sold out in 4 hours.

The religious crazy Zealot (fire blasts, flight, tough, strong, convinced he’s God’s sword on Earth, active for 5 weeks) did crash the concert to kill Lady Gaga, who’s concert schedule was posted on the concert website. Oni took the hit for her, Jack Daniels aka Badfinger took Zealot down, Fire Eater of the NYFD snuffed collateral fires, V Carlysle healed Oni and then teleported boyfriend Agent Mgwanze in to Cure Zealot — all captured live by three cameras. The video made tons of money at $5 a download.)

Our Agents and everybody but Lehnsherr and Jeffries pulled out of the Philippines shortly thereafter. [So in this game world, the casualties were cut by maybe 25+% and the water and food shortages cut by maybe 75%. The world noticed.]

Rao and Singh got clearance to fly across the US* and visited the Xavier Institute.

*Flying under your own power is legal in most jurisdictions, within limits. Fliers must stay out of airport flight paths, avoid controlled zones (military bases, many government offices, etc.) and not recklessly endanger people. Very few supers cause sonic booms at supersonic speeds, but supersonic flight across the US (and many other countries) is controlled, largely because a supersonic person looks a lot like a missile on radar — and a supersonic flier carrying a 50 lb. rock IS effectively a missile platform. Enforcement is difficult, but Iron Patriot or Cannonball can catch most fliers and others (Agent Barton for instance) can shoot them down.

Ambush

Notes:
The group mind inventorfest continued at the Skunk Works. Jeffries, Viera and Thea Grace made flying cars. They reworked Viera’s (already converted) Ferrari. Jeffries got two, including a Batmobile. Thea got one for herself and each of her sisters. One for Director Fury. One for Deputy Director Hill. And a bunch of others. Phoebe and Mindee Grace showed up and broke the mindmeld. The carmakers collapsed, exhausted.

Vanessa Carlysle enjoyed a few days camping with Agent Mgwanze — who doesn’t like camping, but VC needed to get away from most people. Upon her return, she visited the Xavier Institute and wiped her array of copied power (and mental) templates by standing close to James Bright aka Leech. No more Sabertooth in her head. Next: new templates, none of them crazy or criminal.

Director Fury called Agents Mgwanze and Copeland (White and Talon were out on assignment) and informed them that today was Moving Day. The teleport block tech worked and was installed at the newly expanded Skunk Works, which had room for their office. They were getting the hell out of Disneyland. Pack up their personal items and pack up the secure data and equipment (SHIELD weapons, Cure dispensers, etc.) for movement via teleportation; the rest would go by truck. Be ready to take down their teleport block upon receiving another call in an hour.

Fury called back and was teleported in by Agent Harris along with Agent Rogers. They had a mission. The remaining at-large South American super-assassins were gathering to be exfiltrated by their Hydra controllers. Unfortunately, the Hydra agents were working out of the Huntington Beach Saddleback Church compound (church, high school & sports center in a rich neighborhood…) which posed problems. They’d call in a credible bomb threat — blaming al-Qaida, since Hydra was unknown to the public — to clear the compound. Tech Support would take down the compound’s electronic security. Rogers and Agent Dukes and Rogers’ SHIELD assault squad would go in the front. Mgwanze, Copeland and Agent Marko (aka Sandman) would go in the big bus garage to the suspected underground ops center. Objectives: capture as many Hydra agents and assassins alive as possible, dead if not, acquire all the data from the ops center and copy everything in the whole compound if possible.

The op did not go well.
The Hydra force had half a dozen working Hydra ‘blasters’, something not seen since 1944. The ambush was very good, led by what appeared to be a clone of Johann Schmidt aka the Red Skull, without the facial disfigurement, with Erskine super-soldier enhancements. Rogers and Dukes were hit and disappeared. The assault squad retreated. Marko, Mgwanze and Copelend were also zapped…

To appear in a frozen plain, in a forty mph wind, with all their electronics which had been turned on fried, surrounded by over a thousand frozen, mummified corpses, near a 11’ tall rotating metal device of some sort. Marko was in bad shape as half his sandy mass had been left behind in California, leaving him mentally impaired. Rogers would freeze, eventually, though perhaps not fatally. Dukes was immune to the cold. Copeland and Mgwanze turned their assault suit heaters on. Mgwanze queried the device and was told it was the beacon for the Hydra “blasters”. The corpses were nearly all US, British or Russian WW2 soldiers.

Their lasers and stunners were fine. They had two days of ration bars for two, the Stark batteries from their blasters, the Hydra teleport beacon and all the gear from the corpses around them. Their suit GPS established that they were in Antarctica, about 210 miles from the US Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. Copeland, Rogers and Dukes lasered and dug out an ice cave and packed it with uniforms. Mgwanze tried to figure out what they could do with the beacon — WW2 Hydra devices were crazy dangerous. Marko tried to not blow away. They made Dukes some cross-country skis and snow shoes from rifles — laser them red hot and Dukes could mold them by hand — fit for his 400 lb body. (Comfort was not a problem, he’s high invulnerable.) Dukes left for the ASSPS on foot. The others used scavenged 70+ year old radio parts and their own equipment to turn the beacon off and use it to power a spark-gap radio and attempted to broadcast to the station.

Several hours later Agent Petrovna (aka Dark Star, SHIELD Russia) found them. She brought Lila Cheney, rock star and world’s most popular teleporter along. (Amundsen-Scott got their messages, sent word to the authorities. Cheney has global range but had never visited Antarctica. Nor had Petrovna, whose 250 mile teleport range was insufficient for the jump from Tierra del Fuego to the Antarctic Peninsula, so they had to fly over.) Cheney agreed to transport a team to deal with the dead WW2 soldiers and examine the device. Petrovna determined that the teleport beacon was, perhaps, within her force bubble weight limits but she’d want some scientists to look the piece of Nazi govno over before she’d move it, and there was no way she’d try to teleport the thing at all.

Petrovna loade them into a darkforce bubble and flew them along Agent Dukes’ trail. They caught up with him two miles from Amundsen-Scott. He swore a bit and finished the trip on his own. The stationers treated them like celebrities and there was much picture taking and autograph signing. Then Lila zapped them to the Skunk Works.

Back in Huntington Beach, SHIELD blew the compound up and made it look like the ‘terrorists’ did it. No bodies were recovered. SHIELD contractor Ricardo Obregon found and recorded the power signature of the teleporter who took the Hydra agents away.

Director Fury sent Pres Obama a recommendation that the public be made aware of Hydra. Petrovna did the same for Pres Putin.